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Friday, January 25, 2008

The worst leader is who people despise, a good leader is who people worship. A great leader is he who makes people say "we overselves did it"

If you really look at the responsibilities of a true Scrum Master, he is supposed to be a great leader. One of the key responsibilities of a Scrum Master is to create a Self organizing team, where team is empowered to make decisions, lead the project towards the goal. * A true Scrum Master(SM) won't spend time micro managing activities of the team and instead, he/she would be working towards creating a space for the team to express themselves. * SM steps out observing the team, coaching them to move in the right direction. This process of empowerment ultimately makes the team feel possessive about the project and creates an image that "they" did everything. * A true Scrum Master would stay as an angel not in the view of the team, but keeping a watchful eye on every movement of the team.

So, going back to the quote from Tao Te Ching, the Scrum Masters should not consider themselves as "transformed project managers" but work towards becoming great leaders, satisfying the true meaning of "Scrum Master".

Even though no body is born as a leader, I firmly beleive that some of the leadership skills could be developed by observing other leaders.

I have been reading one of my favorite books Slack, and in one of the chapters on schedules, Tom brings up a good point about accountability and productivity. He mentions that

When a schedule is not met, those inclined to pass out blame are quick topoint at the lowest-level workers; they reason that performance is the domainentirely of those who perform the work. They ask plaintively, "why can't theseguys ever meet their schedules" ? the answer that the schedule might have beenwrong in the first place only befuddles them.

He continues to say

There is such a thing as a bad schedule. A bad schedule is one that sets a date that is subsequently missed. .... If the date is missed, the schedule was wrong. ... The purpose of schedule was planning, not goal-setting. Work that is not performed according to a plan invalidates the plan.